A Genre-based Analysis Of Introduction To Financial Products: A Comparative Cross-cultural Discourse Analysis

As the direct and primary communication channel between banks or financial institutions and the customers, introduction to financial products plays a major role in publicizing the financial products or services to the customers. This thesis compares both the moves and the specific linguistic features in English and Chinese introduction to financial products from the social, cross-cultural and marketing perspectives with an aim to find out the similarities and differences between the two versions of the business genre. The underlying reasons are also deliberated from their respective socio-cultural environments. For this purpose, a corpus of sixty samples (thirty in Chinese and thirty in English) are collected to carry out the comparative study.The comparative analysis is carried out within the framework of Swales' (1990) definition of genre, and Bhatia's (1993) move analysis. Such cross-cultural communication theories as Hall's (1977) high- and low-context cultures, Hofstede's (1991) power distance, individualism versus collectivism and Kotler's (2001) market positioning are employed to explore the underlying socio-cultural reasons for the similarities and differences of the different writing styles and linguistic features. Different socio-cultural influences like history, culture and mode of thinking are also taken into consideration.The analysis starts from comparing the communicative purpose to the detailed analysis of different moves and steps. The communication pattern, discourse structure and linguistic features of this business genre are also illustrated. With examples and careful study, the similarities and differences between Chinese version and the English one are summarized. The strengths and weaknesses of each writing are evaluated as well. The persuasive writing and persuasive process are deliberated and explained, and finally some suggestions ofwriting are proposed. It is the author's hope that this thesis will facilitate the reading, writing and teaching of this business genre in the process of managing in cross-cultural context.